


atavia

by Siria



Series: supervixi [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia can play the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	atavia

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Cate and Jenn for betaing!

Lydia’s always played the long game. She knows this sounds somewhat ridiculous, given that she’s still in high school, that the furthest she’s ever been from home is Los Angeles, and what passes for society in Beacon Hills isn’t exactly what you’d call Machiavellian. But Lydia’s a girl, and petite, and she likes high heels and sales at Sephora, and she’s smart enough to know all the ways that works against a girl who wants to take every AP STEM class her school district has to offer, get a full ride to Stanford or MIT, and earn her doctorate in math by the time she’s twenty-five. Gender stereotypes may be nothing more than a culturally specific hodgepodge of presumptions, correspondence biases, and illusory correlations, but they matter. Lydia figured that out at age eleven, when she stomped on Brody Cipriani’s instep in math class for telling her she wasn’t a _proper_ girl, and her teacher had chastised her by saying that young ladies shouldn’t act so aggressively.

It’s not that she didn’t care for Jackson, but dating him has always been the path of least resistance. Let everyone think that Lydia’s the kind of high school girl who desires status that’s refracted through someone else’s achievement, who wants white picket fences and a spot hanging off some rich guy's arm. Lydia's perfectly happy to let everyone else keep fooling themselves, so long as it makes it easier for her to get what she wants.

And then there’s the night of the winter formal, and the sodium-bright lights on the lacrosse pitch, and all the things that Lydia can’t remember.

*****

What scares her is the way her mind offers up no resistance at all to the impulse that pushes and pulls at her for weeks, to the screams that force their way out of her throat and never sound like her own fear. Lydia wakes up screaming, and she’s standing at the pool and she’s screaming, and the corridors at school are dim and empty and somehow still full of the sound of running feet and she’s screaming. No matter how much she swallows, she can’t get the salt-copper taste of blood out of her mouth. Her bed sheets are covered with it; she opens her eyes one morning to find that her hair’s matted with it. 

Lydia’s never been afraid of making some noise if she has to, but now, now she thinks maybe she is. She has no strategy for this.

*****

The cord is cold and smooth and much too tight around Lydia’s throat. She tells Ms Blake to stop, but she won’t, Lydia _begs_ but she won’t; Lydia’s clothes stick to her, clammy with sweat, her face is wet with tears and blood, and Ms Blake tells her that she’s just a girl who _knows too much_ ; and Lydia does the only thing she can. It’s instinct, and it’s fear, and it’s anger, because how many people have told her _that_ since she started school? Lydia gets her hand up and between the cord and her neck, yanking it away and giving herself enough space to scream. It’s loud enough to set her own ears to echoing, to leave her breathless, and for a moment at least it works—the pressure around Lydia’s neck eases, and Ms Blake steps around to look at her with a terrible kind of amusement on her face. 

“You have no idea what you are, do you?” she breathes. “The wailing woman. The banshee.”

Lydia’s head aches and her hands are trembling, and she wishes she could pull herself together enough to snap that she’s Lydia Martin—she’s _always_ known who she is—but this woman is going to kill her. Lydia is going to die. “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it,” Ms Blake says, and as Lydia’s breath comes in great, shuddering gasps, all she can wonder is who is going to scream for her.

*****

Afterwards, her mother offers to help her cover up the marks, fussing over Lydia in the kind of pointed way she hasn’t displayed since the divorce was at its most vicious and every action was calculated as to how it would play in front of the family court judge. Somehow, Lydia doesn’t think that concealer’s going to cut it, though, not with the dark red line rubbed vivid and raw against her skin. Plus, turtlenecks have never really been her style. 

She looks at herself in the mirror and says that she doesn’t see the need to hide the fact that she survived; runs her fingertips along the line of her throat and wonders how loudly she can still scream.

*****

Lydia’s always played the long game, but she knows there are other players, too. So she makes an appointment to see Ms Morrell, waits patiently until 11 on Thursday morning and then says, without preamble, “You know what I am, don’t you?” when she walks into the office. 

Ms Morrell regards Lydia with her customary look of imperturbable patience; her hands are folded neatly on the desk in front of her, and Lydia can see the edge of stark white gauze peeking out from beneath the collar of Ms Morrell’s silk blouse.

“I have an inkling,” Ms Morrell says as Lydia takes a seat. 

“That is an entirely unsatisfactory response,” Lydia says. 

“Then it’s fortunate,” Ms Morrell says, “that that’s what it was intended to be.”

Lydia glares at her, but then something—some indefinable itch in her hindbrain—makes her stop and look more closely. She can see something in Ms Morrell’s expression, something tamped down but present, and somehow Lydia _knows_. “If I scream your fear,” she says, folding her arms and tossing her hair over her shoulder and channelling every ounce of country club snob she knows how, “what will it sound like?”

She’s good, but Lydia knows what to look for—she sees the way she flinches, the faint tightening around the eyes and the rigid set of her shoulders. “There are rules, Lydia.”

“Really? Funny how no one’s told me what they are,” Lydia snaps, because she’s sick of people knowing things and not telling her. “Or maybe almost being torn apart by a werewolf and developing supernatural powers is—”

Ms Morrell holds up a hand, silencing her. “Do you know what the word atavism means?”

“An evolutionary throwback which occurs when an organism shows a tendency to revert to ancestral type,” Lydia says mechanically, recalling last semester’s AP Bio definitions before the pieces click into place and she says, “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“No,” Ms Morrell says. 

Suddenly the awkward, infrequent Thanksgiving visits to her Grandmother Kavanagh's house, with her Great-Grandmother Kavanagh sitting ancient and watchful and always, always silent in the background… well, this puts them all in a somewhat different light. "So this is all because I'm part—"

"Not part," Ms Morrell says. "All. Practically speaking."

"Huh." Lydia tries to absorb that. "Just like you're a…" She gestures at her. 

Ms Morrell nods her head. "I know this is a lot to take in, discovering something like this so suddenly."

"No," Lydia says briskly, folding her arms, "I'm pretty sure you have absolutely no idea, actually."

For the first time since she's known her, the smile which Ms Morrell gives Lydia is wide and bright and absolutely genuine.

*****

Lydia still wants to be valedictorian. She still wants to have her choice of college scholarships, wants to be Dr Martin and publish brilliant things and win enough prize money to go to Paris and spend a stupid amount of money in the Louboutin flagship store. It's just that she's in a different game than she realised, thanks to her great-grandpa's clearly adventurous love life—or maybe she's just given up one and started in on another. 

She's never had much time for team sports before now—dating the captain of the lacrosse team, sure, cheering from the stands, fine, but active participation in them had never really been her thing. Yet here she is, playing one regardless, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of socially maladjusted werewolves, an archer with anger-management issues, and, well, Stiles. But there they are, her team—her _pack_ , she can hear Scott say, his teeth showing sharp against his bottom lip—and they listen to what she has to say just as much as they listen to how she screams. It's still going to be a long game, but Lydia's still got her goals in sight—she's not playing with the second-string team.


End file.
